Ten Galactic Civilizations III changes coming in early 2019

Ten Galactic Civilizations III changes coming in early 2019

If you guys thought that GalCiv III: Crusade was...ahem...a "game changer" you're going to (we hope) really like what we have planned for the Winter 2019 expansion we're working on. We'll be announcing it relatively soon so I won't spoil it here.

Here, however, are our general objectives we want to accomplish:

Fewer clicks with the UI to get things done.

Making really big maps more enjoyable to play on. It's one of our strongest features and they're annoying (IMO).

Bringing back beloved alien species.

Pacing. There is a lot of...emptiness between turns 25 to 75 which is a turn off for many new players and really needs to be addressed.

Multiplayer. While few people play it multiplayer, we think some of our other changes will make the game a lot more skill based.

AI. If you got 3.2 you probably noticed a substantial AI improvement. But we have other improvements in the works. I really want to write up a full on doc on the challenges of AI. Nearly every suggestion we get from players on AI is something the AI already does. The AI does "all the things" but because it doesn't "cheat" (contrary to what some people say) it does not always have the information that players think it has and makes poor choices.

More strategic choices. What I mean by this is that there are certain strategies that are just plain "better" for winning. Rather than nerfing those paths, we are implementing new, equally powerful paths towards success. This is harder than it may sound because we have to code the AI to effectively use these paths.

Tech tree overhaul. This will only be in the expansion because if it were put into the base game a lot of people would get upset I suspect. There are a lot of new techs but most of the "specialist" techs are being removed. Why? They're just not very interesting. A 10% bump in something is enough enough to justify the clickity click click of the tech. Every tech should have meat to it.

Visual pass. We have a lot of good graphics in GalCiv III. And we have some terrible, terrible graphics. Our procedurally generated planets might have looked good in 2012 when they were being developed but...oye. They hurt my eyes.

Fleet battle viewer updates. First, we are hiring game developers. Send us your resume. We have a lot of projects at Stardock and a lot of the time, we can't put engineers on something simply because there are no people free. The fleet battles area of the game is something we really do want to improve but we can't because of lack of developers free to work on it.

Fewer clicks with the UI to get things done.Making really big maps more enjoyable to play on. It's one of our strongest features and they're annoying (IMO).Bringing back beloved alien species.Pacing. There is a lot of...emptiness between turns 25 to 75 which is a turn off for many new players and really needs to be addressed

I really don’t get the dead zone from turn 25 to 75 that is the early game col rush stage. But please is there anyway we could do something about the late game legion grind I am buying off the npcs world’s that have +15 legions for like 200k also I think I am money capped I need resources but I have brought out the entire market could we add like a black market or incredibly costly missions to acquire resources at the end of the game I am fine with it costing ridiculous amounts of money. It feels like the game is taking forever to finish I have lost +240 legions. Also does it make a difference if you send overwhelming odds because I will send 35 legions at 7 defending legions and lose the entire force while using one of the advanced conquest attacks.

Forgotten, Do you use the invasion tactics in game? If a planet has say 20 legions on it and you have 25 you need to both compare the invasion strength of your troops vrs theirs and also soften up the planet using either tidal or core detonation. Both of those are assured of a win in most cases.

I use tidal and still take horrific legion losses which is fine invading is tough work but what I don’t care for is my empire with ridiculous amounts of cash and the majority of other resources isn’t able to produce enough legions. Which is why I’d love a black market or overpriced mission things that you simply would not use unless it is obvious you are going to win. Like maybe a market that is 7 or 8 times the cost of the regular market or 10 times. Or a mission that takes as much production as building 5 stocked capital ships and takes some resources as well.

Also the bar is like 85% to 90% in my favor and I still lose my 25 legions against their 7 legions.

I use tidal and still take horrific legion losses which is fine invading is tough work but what I don’t care for is my empire with ridiculous amounts of cash and the majority of other resources isn’t able to produce enough legions. Which is why I’d love a black market or overpriced mission things that you simply would not use unless it is obvious you are going to win. Like maybe a market that is 7 or 8 times the cost of the regular market or 10 times. Or a mission that takes as much production as building 5 stocked capital ships and takes some resources as well.

Also the bar is like 85% to 90% in my favor and I still lose my 25 legions against their 7 legions.

If you want to link to a save game I'll check it out. I'd be interested in seeing that myself.

I really don’t get the dead zone from turn 25 to 75 that is the early game col rush stage.

This depends on the number of factions and map size and tech pacing however, yes the colony rush for my games extend to between 75-125, then dead time follows as I'm building up my planets and starting to get basic technology to allow me to build ships that can actually do some damage

"Also the bar is like 85% to 90% in my favor and I still lose my 25 legions against their 7 legions." This can happen if you don't put all of the legions on 1 hex so they attack together. If you spread the legions out, they seem to attack separately for some reason. :/

"Also the bar is like 85% to 90% in my favor and I still lose my 25 legions against their 7 legions." This can happen if you don't put all of the legions on 1 hex so they attack together. If you spread the legions out, they seem to attack separately for some reason. :/

This is a long standing bug since invasions were first introduced.

If you click "auto-resolve", you lose even with overwhelming odds most of the time.

If you manage the invasion yourself and place all legions on one hex, fight goes well.

The end result is that invasions are not an "interesting decision" and should either be removed or made interesting.

Making really big maps more enjoyable to play on. It's one of our strongest features and they're annoying (IMO).

Pacing. There is a lot of...emptiness between turns 25 to 75 which is a turn off for many new players and really needs to be addressed.

More strategic choices. What I mean by this is that there are certain strategies that are just plain "better" for winning. Rather than nerfing those paths, we are implementing new, equally powerful paths towards success. This is harder than it may sound because we have to code the AI to effectively use these paths.

Tech tree overhaul. This will only be in the expansion because if it were put into the base game a lot of people would get upset I suspect. There are a lot of new techs but most of the "specialist" techs are being removed. Why? They're just not very interesting. A 10% bump in something is enough enough to justify the clickity click click of the tech. Every tech should have meat to it.

Fleet battle viewer updates. First, we are hiring game developers. Send us your resume. We have a lot of projects at Stardock and a lot of the time, we can't put engineers on something simply because there are no people free. The fleet battles area of the game is something we really do want to improve but we can't because of lack of developers free to work on it.

Let me know what you think!

Happy New Year!

The points above interest me greatly, especially the part about big maps as I really enjoy the feeling of playing a map that feels GALACTIC as opposed to fighting over what feels like a sector of space on the smaller maps. The battle viewer was one of my favorite features when the game was released, but I haven't been enjoying it since most attacks look like red dots now.

With that said, I would like to add an admittedly small issue that has disproportionately bothered me since invasions were changed to the legion system. When invading, even if the power is massively in my favor I always "lose" one attacking legion due to rounding when one tick of my forces (presumably 1/10 of a legion) is removed due to the dice rolls. It would make sense if that fractional legion was kept as a garrison to defend from counterattack, but in reality it means that an effective way to bleed attackers is to keep 1 (and only 1, as I have almost never seen defenders win outright) legion for defense at each planet on larger maps. Related to that, it seems like every new colony really should have 1 legion to start with, as I cannot imagine a ship carrying enough people to start a settlement not having some type of militia. There was a mod that gave that ability (can't remember what it was called right now, but I decided to go away from mods a while ago) and it really changed the feel of the game when the blitzkrieg types can't take their first transport and immediately get the half dozen closest planets for free.

Looking forward to the updates, and thank you for keeping us informed.

"Also the bar is like 85% to 90% in my favor and I still lose my 25 legions against their 7 legions." This can happen if you don't put all of the legions on 1 hex so they attack together. If you spread the legions out, they seem to attack separately for some reason. :/

This is a long standing bug since invasions were first introduced.

If you click "auto-resolve", you lose even with overwhelming odds most of the time.

If you manage the invasion yourself and place all legions on one hex, fight goes well.

The end result is that invasions are not an "interesting decision" and should either be removed or made interesting.

The invasion process is good. I really like it.

Gal Civ is an empire management game, not a tactical combat one. While I'd like a bit more Xcom type choices in the invasion process I know that this game is an Empire building game and not a tactical combat one. Using planetary bombardment should and always win you combat or at least remove 70% of troops unless the target took immunity to bombardment. You are trading planetary quality for removal of those pesky inhabitants!

"Tech tree overhaul. This will only be in the expansion because if it were put into the base game a lot of people would get upset I suspect. There are a lot of new techs but most of the "specialist" techs are being removed. Why? They're just not very interesting. A 10% bump in something is enough enough to justify the clickity click click of the tech. Every tech should have meat to it. "

I know a lot of people read the above and focus on everything except the part that I bolded because people see what they want to see. I, however, know how things really end up turning out. And how I think it's going to turn out is that we'll end up with a feature removed with nothing substantial added in return.

I ask that you reconsider the removal of choices from the tech tree for the following reasons:

1) They're the only choices in the tech tree. If you're unhappy with the bonuses, then change the bonuses, but don't remove the choice. I think everyone can find at least one or two possible choices in each one that they want, so I don't see the problem. Personally, I'd like to see more of them, not less -- and I'd find it strange if others didn't think so as well. These little choices can have a large impact in gameplay, depending on how you approach them (short term vs long term rewards, see points #2 and #3 below).

2) Their existance affects diplomacy/trade. When I see a star next to a tech, I immediately check it out because I probably want it, and then I change gears for a moment to make a good trade. That's the fun part of trading. It also affects how much effort I put into making an AI like me, and I do research (see below point #3).

3) It affects gameplay. But before trading for one of these specializations, I make sure to at least start researching one of the alternatives -- that way I can get both, and that makes me super excited! It feels good to get multiple specializations through trade because that's the only way to get more than one! But this isn't always an easy choice to make (researching in an otherwise non-optimal way in order to get a secondary benefit), and because it's not an easy choice it adds to gameplay. Furthermore, you'd have to delay the choice as long as possible to increase the likelihood of this payoff (delayed gratification, it's a thing) -- sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. I thought this was brilliant balancing, to incentivise researching things you otherwise wouldn't! So, what, are you now saying this all just a happy accident?

I hope these 3 reasons why at least help you see things from a player's perspective on how removing gameplay features makes us feel about your game. It makes me sad.

I think choices in the tech tree are brilliantly done. They could not be done better, unless you had more of them -- which is the opposite of what you intend to do. Mindblowing. There are so many low hanging fruit to improve the user experience, and you chose this why?

I do trade more with the AI because of the tech specializations and find myself researching things that I know the AI won’t research so I can just trade for it also means I put more effort into diplomatic endeavors then I otherwise would. The only thing I would change is the ability to decline a gift because sometimes the AI gives you a tech you didn’t want and then you are locked out of what you wanted. ( however it would be helpful if you could glance at your the tech tree first to see what they were giving you but I’m ignorant of how difficult this would be to make )

Also I haven’t had time to play recently I am really looking forward to seeing if auto resolving battles is what was leading to massive legion losses.

Really enjoying the game and trying to convince my brother and little cousin to take the step up from Civ 5 and jump from Checkers to Chess. Looking forward to buying the new expansion on launch.